The 11th hour for Tara

After 7 years involvement with the M3/Tara issue and with all the learning and experience that that entailed, I have become ever more baffled as to how the Tara landscape, with its inherent complexity, was ever chosen as a preferred route for a four lane motorway. The choice was shown to be clearly wrong from the beginning and as each new bit of information unfolded, it became even more wrong and nonsensical.

However with the latest discovery of a major national monument directly in the way of the road at Lismullin, the Minister Dick Roche now has a golden opportunity to reconsider and, at the 11th hour, properly fulfil his role as protector of our National Heritage.

With the first and most crucial section of the M3 (which includes the Dunshaughlin by-pass) already underway with no problems, there need be no delays to commutor relief. In fact, the long predicted difficulties in the Tara section should spur us on to demand the only real solution for commuter misery, i.e. the fast-tracking of the rail to Navan.
So let us hope that both the Minister and election candidates will desist from using the “delay” argument as justification for another wrong decision. The only delay to construction of this road was due to the amount of archaeology present which the authorities knew from the beginning.

The Minister has two choices regarding Lismullin. If he chooses wisely and responsibly he will allow time for proper independent assessment of  this national monument in its contextual setting of the Tara landscape. If on the other hand, he bows to pure expediency (i.e. what suits short-term rather than what is right) and gives the order for excavation followed by destruction, he will demean not only the office of the Minister for Heritage, but all Irish people everywhere. Such an order would be a gesture of contempt to generations of scholars who have  sought to understand the nature of Tara, as well as to  the large and growing numbers of ordinary Irish people whose genuine concerns have simply been ignored.

It is to be hoped that the electorate will use their votes in the forthcoming election to support those candidates who have the courage and integrity to call for a review of this controversial section of motorway. This will  not be a question of winners and losers. When truth is the winner we are all enriched. 

Without it we all lose.